Barcelona - en Ethpangnol
Trip Start
Jul 04, 2006
1
25
50
Trip End
Jan 15, 2007
Barcelona,
Spain
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
That being said, Cannes has:
- excellent beaches
- difficult to find and always packed Internet cafes
- some of the most heinous smells that just hit you when you walk around random corners
- not nearly as many famous people as you would expect (maybe it was the smells...)
Anyway, on to Barcelona
Cannes
.Barcelona
I love Gaudi. This man and his work is simply amazing. All one has to do is just glance at the Sagrada Famiglia and they will know that they are beside work of a genius. From the intricate carvings on the facades, to the tying together of the beauty and strength of nature in his structures, there are so many levels of complexity (while at the same time simplicity) to this man's work.
We spent the majority of our time in Barcelona walking around and appreciating Gaudi's work. As a description in words (at least by this writer) can't come close to conveying the impressiveness of everything he put together (well, except the park, which needed more grass for people to actually sit on), I'll let you just look at the pictures.
We also had a chance to finally make it to the opera and got to see Mozart's "La clemenza di Tito". It was a great opera (yes, there is such a thing you heathens!), if not a bit unrealistic. Surprisingly, not about Michael's arguably less-talented brother, this opera was about a Roman leader who was so nice that he even pardoned a guy that tried to kill him, as well as the woman that put said guy up to it
Cannes - street
. Basically Tito (again, not Jackson) gave both the would be killer and his girlfriend tongue lashings (and given that he was an opera singer - the lashings were quite powerful). Then they all got cake (well, something like that).Barcelona was a place filled with great beauty, interesting streets (complete with roughly 4 thousand human statues who would occasionally take smoke breaks) and odd people (naked guy with what looked like a really, really, really painful piercing and tattoos).
One thing that I found quite confusing though (well, besides the naked guy - seriously, how could you do that to yourself??) was the language. Where in South America (and as I later found out, South of Spain) people will say "Muchas Gracias", those in Northern Spain say "Muchas, GraTHias." At first I just thought I was speaking to people of a more liberal persuassion, but as this speech impediment was heard from everyone, I had to ask about it.
So it seems that in "proper" Spanish, the "C" (that we would pronounce as an S) and "Z" are supposed to be pronounced "Th". Those Southern Spaniards, and South Americans just simply say it wrong.
Gaudi - chimneys
I have another theory...
A while back, though after the conquistadors went and stole, I mean educated the heathens in, South America, there was a king of Spain ("Once I was the King of Spain"... sorry 'bout that) that had a speech impediment. Now obviously it's tough to tell a King that he's not speaking properly as if you did so you were prone to losing a head (or at least some appendage). Soooo, rather than bringing it to the king's attention by speaking properly, the people around the king also started saying "GraTHias" and the like. Well, as the king's people were talking with a lisp, those around didn't want to be taken for uneducated, so they also started mithprounthing there wordth. After thith, everyone thtarted doing it, and thoon, all of Northern Thpain was caught up in it and the language mutated. And thith kept on and on and to thith day, thothe living in the North thtill thpeak like thith.
And the Southerners were too far removed to care.
Could have happened...
